The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (4 page)

             
Barnett asked Lieutenant Sefton to stop for a moment at a small square with a cracked, dry water fountain in the middle. "I want to get the feel of this," he said, going over to inspect the inscription, which told, in a language he could not read, about a battle that had long since been forgotten.

             
"All very scenic, no doubt," Lieutenant Sefton said, leaning on his stick.

             
The mellifluous chanting of the
Mu'adhdhin
sounded from the towering minarets all over Stamboul, calling the Faithful to afternoon prayer, and within a few seconds the streets were virtually empty as the locals went inside to perform the prescribed ritual.

             
Then, over the chanting, came the sound of many running feet. A tall European turned the corner a block away and headed toward the square at a dead run, coattails flying. A second later a gang of Arabs boiled around the corner behind him, waving a variety of weapons, intent on catching up.

             
"I say," Lieutenant Sefton said, "an Englishman seems to be in trouble. We'd better come to his aid."

             
Barnett put his notebook away and took off his jacket. "He might be French," he said.

             
"Nonsense, man—look at the cut of those trousers!"

             
Folding his jacket carefully, Barnett put it on the rim of the fountain. Long experience at barroom brawling had taught him that bruises heal, but ripped jackets must be replaced.

             
Lieutenant Sefton twisted the handle of his stick and slid out an
eighteen-inch blade. "The Marquis of Queensberry wouldn't approve," he said, "but those chaps aren't gentlemen."

             
"I don't suppose you have another of those pigstickers concealed about your person, do you?" Barnett asked, eyeing the approaching mob and the assortment of curved knives they were waving. "If it's to be that sort of a party
..."
He picked up his jacket again and wrapped it around his arm. The custom governing barroom disputes on the Bowery limited the engagement to fisticuffs and an occasional chair or bottle, but—other places, other habits.

             
"Here," Sefton said, tossing him the body of the stick. "It's rolled steel under the veneer. Feel free to bash away with it."

             
"Thanks," Barnett said, hefting the thin steel tube. The tall stranger had almost reached them, and the mob was close behind. Holding the truncated stick like a baseball bat, Barnett advanced to the attack.

He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker.

— Sherlock Holmes

             
He was conspicuously tall, and thin to the point of emaciation. He carried himself with the habitual stoop of one who must traverse doorways constructed for a lesser race, and this stoop, taken with his high, domed forehead and penetrating gaze, gave him the look of some great predatory bird. His mind was quick and incisive, and his actions were ruled by logic. His passions—were his alone, and few of his associates were privy to them.

             
He ran down the Street of the Two Towers, closely pursued by six silent men in dirty brown burnooses. One of them had been following him since he left his hotel, and the six together had attacked him as he left the shop of a dealer in ancient brass instruments a few blocks away. He was deciding among the four most logical means of escape when two men in European dress, waving menacing weapons, raced to his aid. At first he thought they might be trying to cut him off, but they were clearly aiming for his pursuers and not for him. This altered the situation.

             
In an instant, he had stopped running and turned around to face his attackers, his feet firmly planted and his arms together and extended in the
baritsu
defense posture.

             
The Arab nearest him leaped, curved blade high in the air, and brought it down in an overhand arc aimed straight at his temple. With a deceptively easy-looking twist of his body he moved aside, grasped his assailant's knife-arm as he passed, and pinned it behind. The Arab made the mistake of trying to twist free, and he screamed with shock and pain as his shoulder joint pulled out of its socket.

             
Then Barnett and Sefton reached the scene. The lieutenant, using
his swordstick like an épée, took two of the Arabs on in classical Italian style, his left hand raised languidly behind him. Barnett, swinging his stick freely in both hands, rushed at the others.

             
One of the attackers yelled out a few words in a guttural language, and his comrades broke off the fighting and raced away in as close to five different directions as they could manage in the narrow street. Lieutenant Sefton, who had downed one of the men with the first thrust of his blade, raced after another, yelling at him to stop and fight.

             
"Pah!" the tall man spat, straightening up and glaring after the retreating figures. "Amateurs! I am insulted."

             
"Excuse me?" Barnett said, trying to catch his breath.

             
Moriarty dusted himself off. "Thank you for your assistance," he said. "I seem to have lost my hat."

             
Lieutenant Sefton chased the retreating Arab to the corner before giving up. "Too big a head start," he lamented, returning to the square. He took the body of his swordstick back from Barnett and returned the blade to its scabbard. "Are you all right, sir?"

             
"Yes," Moriarty said. "Except for a slight rent in the jacket sleeve and the loss of my stick and my hat. I owe you gentlemen a great debt. Your assistance alleviated a troublesome situation."

             
"Glad to help," Barnett said briefly. He personally thought it might have been a bit more than "troublesome," but he held his tongue. Traditional British understatement, he decided.

             
"Couldn't allow a fellow Englishman to be molested by cutthroat Arabs without doing something," Lieutenant Sefton said. "My pleasure, I assure you. I am Lieutenant Auric Sefton, Royal Navy. My companion is Mr. Benjamin Barnett, an American."

             
Moriarty shook hands with both of them. "From the great city of New York, I perceive," he told Barnett. "Although most recently from Paris. And a journalist, if I am not mistaken."

             
"Why, that's quite right," Barnett said, looking with amazement at the tall man.

             
"Of course it is. I am Professor James Moriarty. I think we could all use a chance to catch our breath. Come, there's a small coffeeshop a few blocks from here. If you would care to accompany me, it would be my pleasure to offer you a cup of that thick brew which the Turk, in his wisdom, calls coffee."

             
"Why did those chaps attack you?" Sefton asked.

             
"I have no idea," Moriarty said. "Let us go to the coffeeshop, where I can sit down. I think I lead too sedentary an existence. My wind isn't what it should be. I promise I'll answer your questions there. Oh—one last thing
..."
Moriarty bent over the body of the downed attacker and gave it a perfunctory examination. "All right," he said, straightening up. "It is as I thought. Let us go."

-

             
The tables at the coffeeshop were arranged outside on the sidewalk, under a wide awning. Barnett and Sefton instinctively picked a table with a bench against the wall, where they could sit facing the street. Moriarty calmly sat facing them across the postage-stamp-sized table. "My usual preference is also the seat with the, ah, view," Moriarty told them, smiling grimly. "But with you two stalwart gentlemen guarding my rear, I feel confident that there will be no surprises. Is it to be
shekerli
or
sade,
gentlemen?"

             
"What's that?" Barnett asked.

             
"Sweet or bitter," Sefton explained. "The coffee."

             
"Oh," Barnett said. "Sweet. Very sweet."

             
The waiter was a short, wide man, sporting a great handlebar mustache and swathed in a white apron. He approached his European customers and performed an impressive dumb show to indicate that whatever language they spoke, he didn't. Moriarty spoke to him in Turkish, interrupting him in mid-gesture, and his face lit up. A minute later he was back at the table, making the coffee in the customary small brass pot over a charcoal burner.

             
"Your knowledge of the language is excellent," Lieutenant Sefton complimented Moriarty. "I have lived here for some time, and I don't speak it nearly so well. Have you been in Constantinople long?"

             
"On the contrary," said Moriarty. "I have been here for but three days. I leave tomorrow."

             
Lieutenant Sefton leaned forward. "And you haven't been here before?"

             
"Never."

             
"Then where did you learn Turkish?"

             
"I have developed a system for learning languages," Moriarty said. "I now speak nine. I confess that Turkish was something of a challenge for the system; I never expected to have to use it. When I learned that I had to go to Odessa on business, I couldn't resist arranging to spend a few days here in Constantinople, both to see the city and to practice my Turkish."

             
"Then you are a professor of languages?" Barnett asked.

             
Moriarty shook his head. "Using my system, the learning of languages is no great task for one of superior intellect," he said. "My degree is in mathematics. When I was younger
I
held the Chair of Mathematics at a small provincial university, but I am no longer so employed."

             
"You don't know who attacked you?" Lieutenant Sefton asked, getting back to the matter at hand. "We should probably report the ruffians to the authorities."

             
"I have no idea," Professor Moriarty said. "I came out of a shop and two of them attempted to propel me into an alley, where the others waited. I broke away. Aside from the fact that they were amateur assassins, and definitely not Arabs, I know nothing whatever about them."

             
"Why do you say they were not Arabs?" Lieutenant Sefton asked. "They looked like Arabs to me."

             
"Such was their intent, but there were a few small details they missed," Moriarty said. "One of them called to the others, and he did not speak Arabic. And the characteristic butternut color of their skin—was greasepaint."

             
"Greasepaint?"

             
"Yes." He pulled out his pocket handkerchief and displayed a dark brown stain across one corner. "The gentleman you left
hors de combat
was wearing this. I suspected it, so I ran the handkerchief across his chin."

             
Lieutenant Sefton took the handkerchief and examined the stain. "Curiouser and curiouser," he said. "So it was more than just an attempted robbery. It did seem to be quite a pack to be hounding one retired professor of mathematics."

             
"Yes," Moriarty said dryly. "I thought so myself."

             
"Tell me, Professor," Barnett said. "I don't want to seem to pry into your affairs, but you're not here, by any chance, to watch the sea trials, are you?"